Essential Ingredients

If you were baking a cake, there would be certain essential ingredients that you’d have to include to make a cake a cake: flour, liquid, eggs. Your resume is the same. The three fundamental ingredients of every resume are:

Your education
Your experience
Your contact details

*it’s customary to begin with your most recent (assumed more relevant) experience first, and ladder down as you go back in time.

Add your Unique Flavor

Then, there are the optional add-ons that give your cake a certain texture or flavor. Baking soda or baking powder? How dense do you want your resume to be? Chocolate or lemon? Do you want your resume to feel rich, or bright? Frosting or no frosting? Is your aesthetic more minimal, or do you want to go for some graphic design?

Here is what’s in your pantry of potential additions, and the specific personality they will imbue your resume with:

Summary:

(Objective, Overview, About Me…)

What it is: a 1-3 sentence overview that sits at the top of your resume and says either 1) what you’re looking for in a job, or 2) your “why” - your point of view / belief system. See our How to Tell a Story on Your Resume post for more on harnessing the power of the summary field.
What it says: I have a precise point of view; I know who I am and what I want (self-knowledge and self-confidence). The specific content also differentiates you from the pack.

Skills:

What it is: a list of your natural gifts or trained know-how that is relevant to the job at hand. This can run the gamut from more hard skills (e.g. Javascript), to more soft skills (e.g. good listener). When listing soft skills, it’s always more effective to have some real-world “proof”, e.g. Emotional Intelligence Training, to back up your self-statements. If you don’t have those but feel they are integral to you, list them anyway. You can always expand upon them in your cover letter, with real-life examples to demonstrate.
What it says: A list of jobs I can do for you and extra value I add. Also, I am a human being, not a human doing.

References:

What it is: A list of professional references and their contact information (2 is standard, occasionally someone will ask for 3). This is useful to include in the body of your resume only if you need filler to bulk it out. Otherwise, this is valuable resume real estate! Add these in the body of your email. Some jobs will have a specific way of reaching out to, or following up on, references - so ask directly what is the best way to provide them.
What it says: I have people willing to vouch for me.

Awards, Certificates and other “Gold Stars”:

What it is: a list of industry-specific “Gold Stars” to showcase formal demonstrations of excellence. This is a space to unapologetically show off your extra cred!
What it says: I have gone above and beyond. I am determined and results-oriented.

Research

What it is: a curated list of research you feel is relevant (and desirable) for the job. If research is valued in your field, and something you have experience in, hang it on the (metaphorical) wall! Include specific titles of the papers you want to get noticed for. These stories are part of your story. This is a place for you to self-brand your zones of interest, so be strategically selective. In focusing, you’ll attract jobs who are looking for someone with those interests and grow your opportunities to deepen them.
What it says: I have a focused set of interests and niche expertise that can be an asset. I have the crafts of research and writing.

See our cake-building Part 2 to learn how to decorate your resume-cake!